This application claims the priority of Korean Patent Application No. 2004-61949, filed on Aug. 6, 2004, in the Korean Intellectual Property Office, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein in its entirety by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an automatic focusing method and a digital photographing apparatus using the same, and more particularly, to an automatic focusing method in which a photograph region is brought into focus through automatic movement of a focal lens to a focal position, in response to a photographing-command signal, and a digital photographing apparatus using the method.
2. Description of the Related Art
A conventional digital photographing apparatus is disclosed in U.S. Patent Publication No. 119,876 entitled “Method of Notification of Inadequate Picture Quality”, filed by the present applicant in 2004. In that disclosure, a focal lens of a digital photographing apparatus is moved to a focal position in response to a photographing-command signal generated by a user, so that a photograph region is automatically brought into focus.
If a digital photographing apparatus focuses automatically on an entire photograph region, then a large amount of data that is unnecessary for focusing has the potential to cause inaccuracies in focusing. Accordingly, some conventional digital photographing apparatuses focus automatically only on the center of a photograph region. If a subject is not situated at the center of the photograph region, however, then the digital photographing apparatus can fail to focus accurately on the subject.